It's all Odin's fault!
There's always too much hype and speculation regarding big events like Fear Itself, you can say almost a living dynamic or symbiosis like MattDemers cleverly and funny pointed out when he created the "board of things that happen in big events", like a checklist, a path that the writers and editors follow when the subject is big events - I don't want to bring up the whole discussion of "is the industry abusing of fans by delivering big events each year, are the fans fed up of big events", instead I want to say, in brief words, what Fear Itself did right or wrong. One of the greatest things about this event (especially this issue and the last one) were the big clashes and battles, allowing Immonen to explore this great feat of his art, unfortunately there were so many characters involved that it's impossible to focus and optimize the item action, since it's a big confusion, you don't even know who's fighting who - other thing that got my atention was the fact that this event was much about Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, milestones of Marvel, so that's a cool thing, unfortunately because Iron Man was the only one who had his ongoing title directly tied-in with the event (Cap was only participating in the main series, only showing up a little in Avengers, while Thor only showed up in the main book, since Journey into Mistery was about Loki) I felt Cap was a little left aside (though he appears a lot in the event - wraping up the good things, though the book took seven issues to conclude, I believe it was a very cohesive and interesting story, with beginning, middle and conclusion well developed, perhaps it would be better if issues # 3 to 5 had a better pace, since you can read only the main series and get everything that's happening (note: if you want to read Fear Itself, avoid the tie-ins, stick to the main series, you won't regret it), so I believe Fraction in the end delivered an action packed event, filled with good moments and interesting aproaches of characters, good team ups and solutions (talking about the weapons of Odin). Now that the praising ended, it's time to get ugly, and I don't want so say a lot, only that there were so many gaps in this issue, so many holes in the narrative, feelling that Fraction waited too much to tell the true story you know, so if he made a compact and shorter story, instead of procrastinating the end, things would be much smoothier and beautiful - also, I like Cap, I truly believe he's the ultimate boyu scout (even greater than Superman), but his decisions in this event and his weapon in this issue were terrible things - the big fight with the Serpent were terrible too, I really didn't understand why it was so ugly, while other battles were good - in conclusion, I like big events, hey, this was way better than Siege (in my opinion), but don't make long events a routine Marvel,'cause seven issues to tell in the end the exact same thing that was told in the first issue and that we all knew would happen, this isn't cool at all! The main problem to me isn't big events, it's the fact that writers (talking about both DC and Marvel) publish only linear, dull and expected stories, there were no turning points, unnexpected accomplishments, not even a single surprise, summing up, a boring read! Also I was lead to believe that his was a double packed issue, meaning it would feature Immonen's art in double, but that didn't happen, instead Marvel used the "double issue" to create a buzz and marketing of it's next releases, like Incredible Hulk and the Defenders (I completely missed out this: now that Hulk and Banner are split - the Aaron/Silvestri book, does that mean that the Hulk in the Defenders - Fraction/Dodsons book is split too? Because it didn't felt this way). Ok, I give 3 out 5 stars, not to this issue but to the whole event, especially because of Immonen's art!
